Detection of barley malt syrup as an adulterant in honey by ¹H NMR profile

Currently, Barley Malt Syrup (BMS) is one of the forms of growing adulteration in honey. However, there have been no reports regarding its identification by NMR. In this aspect, we proposed a ¹H NMR profiling method to discriminate between authentic and honey adulterated with BMS. The authenticated honey samples were artificially adulterated with varying percentages of BMS. It was found that a marker peak primarily falling around the 5.40 ppm region exhibited discrimination between pure and adulterated samples. Furthermore, NMR data of the samples were analyzed using statistical models. The findings demonstrate that NMR sugar profiles region, when combined with PCA analysis, can effectively detect varying degrees of adulteration. Despite qualitative nature of the outcomes, spiking studies have revealed that approach can reliably identify sugar addition at levels as low as 5-10%. Overall, NMR-based approach proves to be effective in detecting BMS as an adulterant in honey.